Chaos
by disillusionist9
Summary: A would-be dark wizard has his mind set on resurrecting Voldemort from beyond the Veil, but before he succeeds Hermione is there to stop him. As the ritual grinds to an unexpected halt, another soul is returned from beyond - Sirius Black. - Remus Lives!, Future AU, for Siriusly Orion Wicked.
1. Chaos

_You must have chaos within you, to give birth to a star. - Friedrich Nietzsche_

* * *

Bits of rubble stuck to her hair and embedded inside of her palms as Hermione moved to stand, muscles and bones protesting every movement, but if she didn't keep moving she would have worse damage than a few cuts and bruises, and one ruptured eardrum.

Another fanatic, a devout follower of Voldemort and his ideology, had attempted to use the Veil for his own dark designs. This time, however, the perpetrator was a man employed by the ministry for thirty years, and ten of those were spent during the second war fighting against Voldemort. Openly! Holden Ogden raised his wand again, the sleeves of his dark blue Unspeakable robes tattered and falling away to display an ugly self-made carving of a Dark Mark on his left forearm.

Hermione spit out a globule of blood from biting the inside of her cheek and threw off her robes as she ran back towards the middle of the Death Room. Thunderclouds gathered above the Veil, the stone structure as old as the Druids fighting back against the insistent ministrations of the dark curses and spells flowing from Ogden's wand like a kicked nest of vipers. Three other of her coworkers - his co workers, too - were trying everything to get through the shimmering sphere cast around him and most of the dais. A Patronus in the shape of a shark brushed by close enough to rustle some of the debris loose from her hair, circling the barrier, attacking at random intervals to try to force its way in. She added her otter to the mix of other prowling blue specters, but didn't stop moving towards the sphere herself.

She thought she heard Justin Finch-Fletchley call her name, right after she set her jaw and lifted her own hand towards the field.

If she expected to be thrown back or a jolt of pain, it didn't come. Her hand, then arm, then entire body passed through the barrier without issue, and the roar of chaos outside was silenced once every inch of her went inside.

"Miss Granger," Ogden said, twisting enough to glance at her without turning his whole body. His arm didn't stop moving.

Her eyes tracked the movements and body moved sluggishly through the air, as if she were underwater, but her voice rang as clear as his. "Holden, don't do this."

Laughter echoed inside like a bell jar, ringing against her damaged eardrum painfully loudly, and overlapping onto itself until it felt like an entire Wizengamot was inside of the cramped space. Even though screams rose up from the angry red of the Veil, they didn't chill her bones like the laughter.

"You've earned my respect this last decade, my dear. I have saved a place for you once I command the spirit of Lord Voldemort. With a force like his power behind me...I'm positive the Ministry will buckle from the combined strength-"

With his attention entirely focused on his work on the Veil, and blindly trusting the molasses like charm affecting Hermione, Ogden underestimated her determination to attack. So, when she body slammed him to the ground, the air easier to move through the closer she got, and his face stuck in a small oh after he was knocked unconscious on the stairs.

The sphere around her popped, the release of pressure almost enough to damage her still-working eardrum. Her balance was already hindered from fighting the vertigo effects of her inner ear obtaining damage. As the rubble started to rumble around her, and her other team members still standing and gaping at the fallen figure of their department Head, Hermione fell to one knee. Small rocks and chunks of debris flew towards the center of the room to reassemble themselves around the dais and the Veil, cutting her exposed arms and cheeks a few more times. Her breath came in gasps and her lungs filled with dust even as it started to settle around them.

She raised her wand to her ear, rolling onto her back to catch her breath. A whispered incantation later and the sick feeling of nausea accompanying disorientation was the only remaining indication her ear was damaged at all.

As the sound of the world flooded back, she called out for a sound off from the others, counting Reyes, Finch-Fletchley, and Hargrove. From the sound of their voices, they'd been knocked down by the outside force of the spell breaking.

Terrible coughing filled the silence, the sort of sound heard in hospitals and on streets when tuberculosis ran rampant, coarse and warning that death was not far behind. Hermione lifted herself up to cast an _anapneo_ in the direction of the sound to relieve her teammate from the dust likely coating their lungs, not even opening her eyes, fighting waves of exhaustion after battling Ogden, the bastard, for hours. They would need Aurors to collect him, but the spells locking them inside would need to be broken first, and-

"Bellatrix! Where are you, you fucking bitch, you _coward_! Come out, come out and play!"

Her eyes snapped open and her heart stuttered, the list of tasks wiped clean from her mind. Long black hair filled her vision, framing a dirt-streaked face aged well past his thirty five years of age. His clothes were the same dark house clothes from the night over twenty years ago when he'd fallen through the Veil. Her stomach twisted at the wild expression in his eyes, the wand in his hand swinging like a broken compass needle, and blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

" _Sirius_?"

Wild eyes latched onto her, and before she could sit up and scramble away, or even grasp her wand, he was on her. A bony knee held her down across her hips and his non-dominant hand pushed her shoulder into the stairs below. The tip of his wand started to bruise beneath her jaw.

"What have you done with Harry?" he screamed. The wand trembled and heated in warning.

"No!" Hermione choked out, forcing herself to relax, recalling what Sirius's Animagus form was and could do. "Sirius, it's me, it's Hermione! Harry is _fine_ I promise!"

"You're lying! What did I give to Hermione Granger for Christmas two years ago?"

Rapid equations flew through her mind before she cataloged that Sirius would think two years ago was her third year. "Nothing! I thought you were a murderer!"

The wand relaxed slightly, but Sirius pushed more insistently into her shoulder. Hysterically she thought _if this is a hallucination caused by something Ogden did, we are ALL fucked_.

His eyes searched her face rapidly, looking for something he seemed to find several long seconds later, when he fell back to land heavily on his feet next to her. He kept a tight grip on his wand and didn't stop staring at her, pupils dilating quickly.

"... _Hermione_?"

* * *

[a/n] October 10th, 2016 - _Originally posted as Chapter 67 of the Choose Dare Drabbles, and after very popular demand this will be expanded to about five chapters. And since it is October it is likely to have heavy influences from Halloween themes._


	2. Familiar Arguments

_We adore chaos because we love to produce order. - M. C. Escher_

* * *

Her hands were numb from folding her arms so long, and they stung when Harry attempted to move her up to bed for the night, waking her up fully.

"C'mon, Hermione," Harry whispered, soft enough so the finally, finally, sleeping wizard on the bed nearby wouldn't be disturbed. "Let's get you to bed."

"I can't leave him alone," she argued.

Harry's eyes caught the light of a car passing in the street outside of Kingsley's flat, tucked away in a neighborhood not far from where the Muggle Prime Minister lived. For a moment he blinked and readjusted to the darkness, but kept gently tugging at Hermione's arms.

"I won't." His voice was low and soothing against her nerves, the same effect as petting a kneazle the right way after someone pushed against the grain of the fur. The static electricity building in her hair dissipated some. "Let me do this."

As she unfolded herself from the chair, she brushed her hand along Harry's jaw to check on the state of his healing bruise. Sirius hadn't calmed down until they'd almost been forced to sedate him with a Stupefy or a Calming Draught, and several of the Auror's responding to the scene in the Department of Mysteries caught the wrong side of his fists. Harry smiled against her inspection. His hand lifted to cover hers and bring it over his chest to rest against his heart. His heartbeat was much slower than it had been several hours ago, the shock of seeing his godfather railing against the efforts of so many Ministrial employees finally dissipating, where his eyes still frequently darted over to the bed to make sure he was still there, but Harry wasn't tearing his hair out anymore.

Some things never changed, and the emotional resilience of Harry Potter was one of them.

"You tell me as soon as he wakes up, or anything happens," she said, her voice barely loud enough for Harry to hear. "I'll just be downstairs."

"You'd better actually sleep, Hermione."

"Take your own advice," she replied, her voice lacking any sort of venom as she slipped out of the room. Before the oak met the door frame, she glanced back to see Harry pulling the armchair a few inches closer to his sleeping godfather, a myriad of emotions running rampant across his face.

* * *

The solid sound of porcelain against a soapstone tabletop in the basement of Grimmauld Place rang around the lab, rising above the soft bubbling of two cauldrons and a beaker with a Bunsen burner beneath it.

Teddy Lupin looked up from where he was furiously taking notes, his hair a darker blue than normal as he concentrated on his task. His mug of tea rattled against the table again after he set it down, another healthy gulp rushing down his throat to his empty stomach. He stood after he'd completely drained his tea and turned to his lab partner.

"I've finished, so I'm going up to check on Da. Do you need anything, Hermione?"

Hermione didn't stop stirring the potion she was brewing with her apprentice, but she did lift her face to watch him start striding up the stairs. "Set the translations here, please. And no, I'm set, thanks. This will need my attention for at least another hour."

"I'll be down with lunch in forty five, then."

As his long legs carried him out of her sight before she could protest, Hermione lifted the notes he'd left her up with her right hand while her left kept time for another two minutes. She silently praised Andromeda, and not for the first time, for making Teddy sit penmanship courses after his first year; each letter and number stood crisp and clear against the page, and the book she had him translating from Old Norse to Modern Runes was heinously difficult as each rune had at least two meanings. Teddy's interpretation was nothing short of inspired.

The stirring rod made a clear note ring through the room as she drew it from the cauldron carefully and set it in the sink, the notes still up to her face as she read the theories and codes of what was the makings of Teddy's Mastery submission. She absently scratched at the tattoo on her inner arm inked after she'd earned her Mastery in Ancient Runes fifteen years before, and wondered if Teddy would get a similar one. Traditionally the Masters of Ancient Runes would choose a phrase in whatever old language they'd spent their training focusing on, but Hermione had a suspicion he'd get one to represent his father and the other Marauders.

As if on cue to her thoughts, she heard the soft padding of feet down the stairs, and her ears perked up to listen to whose they were, recognizing them more on instinct than sound. Two slippered feet descended from the first floor, connected to a man who looked exhausted out of his mind, having been up most of the previous night from the full moon.

"Remus," she greeted warmly. "Teddy said he was going up to check on you."

Settling himself into another chair near Hermione, Remus lifted his feet with some effort to rest on the ottoman between them. "He did, but he wouldn't believe me when I insisted that I'm fine."

One leg unfolded from her perch on a plush armchair in the corner of the lab, and Hermione used it to gently nudge one of the crossed feet near her. Remus chuckled at the way she regarded him: if she were wearing glasses, she'd be peering over them in a manner uncannily similar to Albus Dumbledore.

Throwing his hands up, the sleeves of his too-large robe falling down to his elbows, the werewolf said, "I concede, I concede. I'm sore as shit but I don't want my son to worry about me when he's got his Mastery next month."

"He made sure his exam is a full week after the moon, and though he's nervous as hell, he'll do wonderfully. He doesn't agree with me when I tell him he's brilliant...like father, like son."

Remus grinned despite himself, pushing back against her foot a bit in retaliation, unable to form a viable argument to her point, the decades-old debate over Remus's self-deprecation ringing in their memories.

Silence followed as Remus leaned his head back against the chair to relax while he hid away from his worried son. Hermione's rustling papers were the only sound until her wand buzzed to alert the potion was nearly ready.

"Do you need Teddy?" Remus asked without opening his eyes.

"No, this is purely potions, and he's already mastered the Wolfsbane prep. I need him to focus on Ancient Runes for the next month as much as he can. You should go up and have lunch with him. Is Dora coming home on lunch today?"

"I'm not sure," Remus replied. He swallowed thickly against a dry throat, the sound loud enough for even an average ear to pick up above the sound of Hermione adding more ingredients to her experiment. Hermione absentmindedly waved her unoccupied hand to send a mug of tea towards him, which he collected out of the air before it landed on his head. "Thank you. Harry mentioned something about a half day today."

The calendar inside of her head flipped until she realized what day it was. She'd memorized every full moon from sixth year until 2065, but the dates still blurred themselves sometimes. When it landed on October 25th, 2018 she hummed in understanding as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. "Today is-"

"October 25th."

The new voice filled the room the way only his could.

Without his shoulder-length hair partially concealing them, Sirius's bright silver eyes regarded the two of them with open curiosity. The patterns cut into one side of his head curled around his ear and into his part, where the other half flipped up in a messy pompadour. His hands were resting in the pockets of his dressing gown loosely belted over what appeared to be only a pair of boxer shorts, the tattoos on his chest and a few on his legs in full view. Compared to Remus, who'd battled through another transformation and sleepless night, Sirius looked as energized as a teenage boy on his way to the Quidditch World Cup.

He'd not aged a day within the Veil, but the years in Azkaban still showed in the length of the lines around his mouth beneath trimmed facial hair. As much as the house they stood in had changed since his death and resurrection, he still appeared to age another ten years while within its walls, and only came here during full moons to spend them as Padfoot with Moony. And, though she were loathe to admit it, in the months after his return, Hermione had holed up in the home's basement more often than she had even when she'd been using its expansive lab for her Potions Mastery in order to avoid him.

Nearly a full year separated the moment he'd been extracted from a blood-red Veil by a would-be Dark wizard, and Hermione still had a difficult time remembering this Sirius was closer to her age than Remus's. She turned back to stirring the cauldron in front of her, watching the pieces of mint and wormwood melt into the acidic brew evenly with her careful attention, and willed away the urge to continue tracing the runes along Sirius's collarbones. The little hairs at the back of her neck alerted her baser senses that he wasn't restraining himself from looking at her while he walked to take the seat she'd vacated.

"You're infuriatingly awake, Padfoot," Remus said. She could hear rustling behind her as she assumed Remus sat up and Sirius adjusted his robe, from the way the scent of the two of them washed over to her.

"I've always been this way after a moon run."

"Let me rephrase - you're constantly infuriating, Padfoot."

"Play nicely," Hermione said, turning over her shoulder with a look of warning before the two men could escalate into a verbal slap fight, "or get out of my lab."

"Yeah, Moony, play nicely. I'm only freshly bloomed from the Veil, after all, and quite fragile."

Hermione's stomach dropped to her knees as memories of the battle in the Department of Mysteries filled her mind. On autopilot, she didn't notice her palm crushing the dried mint leaves into a fine powder, fingers moving in time with her gritting teeth, the smells and sounds of the lab falling away, replaced with the acrid scent of Dark Soul magic and charred flesh...

A near inhuman growl rumbled in Remus's chest, covering his snickers of laughter. "You are so full of shit."

Teddy chose that moment to bound down the stairs, Harry and Dora behind them, and Hermione's senses were so focused on who was already in the room that she nearly destroyed a week's worth of work, stopping herself from dropping in more mint leaves just in time.

"Are you packed, then?" Remus asked his friend, his voice a bit gruff as he stood from the low armchair.

Hermione heard Sirius hum in confirmation. "Yeah. The kid and I are leaving in the morning."

"You can hardly call him the kid anymore, Pads. He's as old as you are now."

"Poppycock, he could be ten years older than me and I'd still call him kid."

As the two men went back up the stairs, Hermione breathed in deeply, realizing she was holding her breath as she lowered the heat on her potion and removed it from above the burner, but her lungs still filled with a scent that had plagued her for months.


	3. Calamity

_I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality - Rabih Alameddine_

* * *

The ground beneath her was spongy and slippery after three days of rain, giving easily with every step as she ran, and her legs stretching as far as she could make them go. Fallen trees and rocks were no match for her strides. Her small body made short work of the treacherous path, and her breath rattled in her ears as it sprinted up and down her throat.

Several feet of air separated her body from the ground as she pushed up and off of a mossy fallen oak branch on the last stretch of her run. Miles stood between herself and any other living human, she could feel the expansive solitude in this state, this trance between sleep and wakefulness. The lines between body, soul, mind, and nature blurred until she could count the hairs on her face and smell the changes in wind direction several seconds before they happened.

The cold chain of fear tethering her breastbone to an unknown danger was not welcome here. Its presence was phantom but felt too corporeal. Her fear drove her forward faster than she'd ever needed to push this body before, wide eyes taking in the surroundings unblinkingly.

Dark storm clouds grew thicker the further she sprinted. Stars burst behind her eyes from exertion to replace the stars hidden behind the ominous shroud above.

Hermione felt the pull of her mind regaining force as she tried to shift fluidly from four legs to two, the scent of the two men she was seeking growing overpowering and causing her nerve endings to feel aflame beneath her skin. _Pack_.

Equally untidy and raven shocks of hair stood starkly against the grass a few feet in front of her as she collapsed to catch her breath. The patterns shaved into the side of Sirius's head were caked with dried blood, a macabre image she had to swallow past to keep her focus. Two fingers from each hand rested against the pulse points on Sirius's and Harry's necks, her arms stretching to their limit between them, ensuring she could apparate them safely. Her rudimentary healing knowledge was enough to confirm they were unconscious but alive, and they'd need professional medical attention as soon as possible. A quick glance between the two of them told her she would have an easier time dragging Sirius closer to Harry in order to get a better handle on each of their arms. As soon as she could, she closed her eyes to focus on the warded room at Grimmauld Place specifically arranged for her arrival.

Remus didn't so much as flinch when she arrived, landing heavily with the two men that had been missing for three days. He yanked the door to the room open mid-pace, allowing three bodies, all limned from the stark light in the hallway, to enter in a single file line. Luna waved diagnostic charms over Harry while Fred and George bodily lifted first Harry then Sirius onto the two beds in the room.

The stark white of the room and the light in the hall made Hermione's eyes water painfully, and she threw up her arm over her eyes, the other still braced on the floor where she kneeled. Her chest still heaved in great gasping breaths to compensate for her sprint across the countryside. Warm hands on her shoulders steadied her and helped her into a more upright position.

"You've done enough, Hermione," Teddy said into her ear quietly, his lips far enough away to not tickle her still-sensitive ears. She had never spent so much uninterrupted time in her Animagus form. Keeping her eyes only partially open, focusing on the black nail polish covering Teddy's fingers, she moved fluidly with him as her godson guided her away from the bright lights and steady buzz of voices.

* * *

She didn't remember much about being put to bed, but she did recall, as she opened her eyes to a window dark enough to belie the lateness of the hour, that the hair atop Teddy's head was a telling flush of red. He was angry with her for running after Harry and Sirius, but she swept away the guilt in her stomach before it could grow. Hermione had done what was needed.

The soft quilt over her shoulders stifled her as a breeze swept into the room. Gold light from the waning moon filtered through the tree outside the open window, guiding her steps as she stood and moved towards the fluttering curtains. Voices rose from the garden below. Her bare feet didn't make a sound as she slipped out of the window and onto one of the many slanting roofs around Grimmauld Place. The rain that assaulted the fields where she'd searched for days hadn't affected London as heavily, but she still stepped carefully on the damp shingles.

"I can't remember it, Remus. Not clearly."

Hermione could hear the strained patience in Remus's voice as he answered Sirius. "You've given us nothing to go on, who could have attacked you in Godric's Hollow, what spell they used on Harry, nothing."

"Don't you think I know that?"

Sirius's face glowed as he lit the end of a cigarette that was likely not his first of the night. Hermione felt her eyebrow rise in surprise as he passed it to Remus first, before taking a drag for himself. As the smoke rose up from where they sat, at the base of the same tree whose branches dappled the moonlight in her room, she understood immediately why Remus had taken it. Not a cigarette after all.

They all sat in silence for a good while, the two men below passing an expertly rolled joint back and forth until even their fingernails couldn't hold onto the butt, and their hidden audience braced on the shingles above, filling her nostrils with the scents of the night blanketed in smoke. She had no reference to how much they'd worked through already, but she imagined they both had a tolerance to whatever they'd shared. When Remus finally spoke again, his words rolled over his tongue smoothly, much softer than before.

"Thought I'd lost you again, Pads."

There was enough light from the first wink of sunrise for Hermione to spot one of Sirius's hands reach over to clasp Remus's. "You didn't, Moons. I'm here, and Harry's here. Teddy's upstairs and Dora is with Harry and Luna. We're all here."

"But you almost _weren't_ ," Remus insisted, twisting his wrist to lace his fingers with Sirius's. The werewolf pressed his face into the bark of the tree behind them to look at the man next to him whose head was wrapped in bright white gauze, most of his forehead obstructed from view. "I've lost you too many times, it's like picking at a scab that I thought healed a long time ago."

A sharp prickling stared in Hermione's nose that had nothing to do with the lingering scent of marijuana.

Sirius dropped his forehead to meet Remus's their eyes locked on each other for several breathless moments. Every passing second lit the world a bit brighter so more details appeared below her, and the acute feeling of intruding on a private moment she wasn't sure how to back away from scratched at her spine as tangibly as the shingles below her bare feet. She could make out the way Remus's cheeks sparkled from tears and the way Sirius's breathing picked up, and how he swallowed more often than necessary.

"I love you, Remus. You can't get rid of me that easily."

The werewolf inhaled sharply, and before he could shatter, Sirius pulled him into his lap to cradle him against his chest. Leather squeaked as Sirius's arms shifted around the werewolf. Hermione noticed for the first time that Remus still wore the same clothes as the night she'd snuck out to search for the missing men herself, unable to sit still a moment longer. He was gently rocked by Sirius as the shaking in his shoulders crested and subsided to rattling breaths.

Before her own quivering lip could morph into a betraying sob, Hermione crawled back through her window and under the covers, pulling them over her head to block out the shushing sounds of Sirius a story below.


	4. November Nights

_It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else. - John Green_

* * *

With Halloween several days in the past, November sunk its claws deeper into the city each passing night.

Fog gently rolled over the streets of London in front of Grimmauld Place, the side garden blissfully secluded from the gaze of passerby. The steam rising above Hermione's blisteringly hot mug of tea rushed to keep pace with the fog surrounding her. The shuffling sound of Harry walking across the cobblestones to join her made her head whip around.

"Staring into space again, Hermione?" he teased as he pulled his dressing gown tighter around his waist. "No, don't get up, I want to sit out here with you for a bit."

"How are you feeling?" she asked, budging up a bit to make room on the bench beneath a canopy of bare tree branches.

"Like shit."

His honest answer surprised a laugh out of her, and another as he snuggled up under the blanket across her lap, pressing his chilly hands where she wore the shorts she typically slept in. She put up a token protest but made sure to arrange herself into a more comfortable position for Harry. Moving cautiously, because of his wrapped bruised ribs, Harry rested his head against Hermione's shoulder and the pair sat in silence to watch shiny black taxis and bicylists ride past at intermittent intervals.

"Is Remus still not speaking with you?"

Harry's question called her back to reality again, and she cursed internally at not noticing her thoughts straying again to her time spent searching for them in Animagus form. "He's speaking with me, what made you think he wasn't?"

"He's been in a state the last few days, won't leave Sirius's side for anything. I thought he might have been avoiding you."

"I've been busy with Teddy, he's only got a few more days until his Mastery test."

Harry nodded. The fact the test was coming up could hardly be missed by anyone in the house, the way Teddy only moved from his room to go down to the lab with Hermione, then back again, his nose constantly stuck in one book or another.

"But you've not gone up to check on Sirius, unless he's asleep." Harry must have felt her stiffen against him, because he sat up and pressed on, speaking much quicker. "I didn't know if you were avoiding Remus because he's always in there when Sirius is awake, or if it were Sirius you were avoiding."

"You've been spending time with Draco, haven't you?" Hermione said through gritted teeth. "That was almost Slytherin of you."

"Sorting Hat, Hermione," he reminded her, a long-running joke between the two of them since starting their Ministry jobs, and Harry repeatedly reminded her he _had_ almost been a Slytherin. The teasing sometimes ended with Harry flat on his back laughing after Hermione used a tripping jinx in retaliation. His grin faded a bit as he resettled to rest his head on her shoulder. "You should go talk to him. He'll be up and around in a few days, so now's as good a time as any."

"To say what? 'Hey, I saved you from certain death almost exactly a year after accidentally pulling you from the Veil'? 'Oh, by the way, I've been doing some research, and I've concluded that I'm crazily attuned to your scent'?" Her voice grew shriller as she continued, feelings she'd sheltered bubbling to the surface. "I can't do any of that. He's only just been freed... _truly_ freed for the first time in his life since Azkaban. If he had any idea-"

"That you love him?"

Hermione stopped short, dropping her mug onto the stone to spill her now cold tea into the dirt prepped for winter. The dull crash of the porcelain breaking into large chunks swallowed by a few angry honks past the fence. "What did you say?"

Harry sighed and sat up fully this time. "Hermione. I love you, and you've been my best friend for years. Decades. I watched you fall in love with Ron and I helped you bring your parent's back from Australia. You were with me when we lost Ron, and you kept me from falling apart more times than I can count. Like it or not, I've learned to read you, even when you don't want to show how you feel."

She felt as though she should be angry with him for assuming so much, the way he was pressing his observations onto her felt suffocating, but she felt a prickling of understanding grow behind the fog of her mind.

"It doesn't matter how I feel, Harry," Hermione said, wrapping one of her hands into his, still beneath the blanket for shared warmth. She swallowed against a lump in her throat and tried not to choke on her next words. "When you're well, I need you to come to the Department of Mysteries with me to...to understand why that is."

"You can't just tell me now?" Harry asked, his tone the same one he used when Teddy was seven and trying to hide that he'd done something he shouldn't have.

Instead of meeting his gaze, Hermione turned away from the scrutiny to watch a man walk by with his dog on a leash, his collar held up against the breeze affecting the world outside of their protective charms. She fiddled with the rings on Harry's hands and wished she still had her mug of tea to occupy herself instead.

"It will be easier to explain, is all. Someone attacked you two and we don't know what happened. That's more important than whatever is going on between..." Hermione faltered. The plain silver band spun around a few more times before Harry clenched his fist to stop her fiddling.

Harry sighed like he wanted to argue further, but kept his silence as darkness completely blanketed them.

* * *

 _November 2nd, 2016 - Thank you for your reviews, I will answer any questions as soon as I can._


	5. The Ministry

_Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control. - Terence McKenna_

* * *

Hermione paced around her office the day Teddy sat his Ancient Runes Mastery test, nervous energy on his behalf sending her in circles around her desk over and over again. She hadn't told anyone about what had happened after Sirius came through the Veil and was still having doubts about telling Harry, but she knew if someone didn't know and she did something she'd regret...well the line had to be drawn somewhere.

Harry watched her until he couldn't stand it anymore, knowing she was silently going through every single negative possibility that could occur, and swore the stench of Arithmancy rose from her head in waves. When she passed by him for the twelfth time he grabbed her arm gently. The heavy rings on his fingers squeaked against the leather padding on the sleeves of her robes.

"You're going to make me sick if you circle me again."

"Sorry," she said automatically.

"Teddy will be in there another three hours. You want to show me what you mentioned a few days ago, or...?"

Hermione blew a stray curl away from her lashes and turned a wan smile to Harry. "Actually, I was hoping you'd forgotten."

Harry scoffed and stood, his hand still wrapped around her arm used for leverage. With a bit of careful maneuvering he managed to put his arm through hers so she simultaneously kept him steady while he kept her from running away.

The dark hallways of a Thursday afternoon in the Ministry were a welcome relief, as she didn't feel like explaining why an Auror, specifically Harry, was with her so far into the department when he didn't have official business. She didn't feel his eyes on her, but Harry was watching the way she twisted her hand around her wand in her pocket. He responded by lacing their fingers together to rub his thumb along her knuckles.

His stomach churned with nervous energy, just as in the dark over what was bothering Hermione as he was when he woke up bandaged and bruised a week before. Sirius planned their road trip on his motorbike, using it the Muggle way, to visit Godric's Hollow on Halloween for months. Halloween 1981 had destroyed his life before it really had a chance to begin, and there wasn't time after he'd escaped Azkaban to visit the grave site. Filling their days with happy memories before rolling into the cozy village helped buffer the afternoon spent wandering through streets and graves, remembering. Whoever attacked them had chosen the easiest time to target them.

From what Remus had told them, with Teddy filling in a few gaps along the way, when they didn't return as planned the night of Halloween, no one was worried since they'd suspected the two of them needed more time to come to terms with the past. The next day increased the tension in the house as the Ministry sent an owl asking where Harry was. By Saturday, Sirius's birthday (which they hadn't decided was his 59th or some bastardized version of his 38th), Grimmauld Place was at loose ends. Remus had gone into the Ministry to speak to Aurors banding together in a search party, urging them all to stay put while they organized something to find the two men, suspecting foul play. As soon as he'd gone through the Floo, Hermione left out the front door, returning sixty three hours later soaked through with rain and dragging two half-alive men in a desperate apparition. Her Patronus, sent two hours before, was all the warning they'd had she would be returning with them.

Their shoes clicked loudly on the cobblestones on their way to whatever section of the department Hermione was leading him to. Harry spent more time in the field than in the Ministry itself and never before, not even the night Sirius went through the Veil the first time, had he seen this area of the DoM.

His throat itched from the effort of withholding his questions, and each time he parted his lips and drew in a breath to say something, she glanced up at him with a silent plea to wait.

The room they entered was anti-climatic. Perhaps it was grand in its simplicity, dark wood walls unadorned with any measure of decoration and not a stool or table in sight, but Harry thought it made the small circular pool in the middle look menacing.

"What's this room called?" he asked, a bit desperate to say _something_ at this point. He absently scratched his rib cage, trying to soothe what was beneath the bandages, the mending creams irritating his skin as the bones slowly knit themselves.

"Penseive Room," Hermione said.

Harry looked at the little pool again with new knowledge. "That's a-"

"Pensieve. Yes." Hermione's tone brokered no argument as she tapped the wall with her wand to open a closet hidden behind a seamless door. Her heavy jacket slipped inside and she held out her arm for Harry's as well. "Sometimes we need to have upwards of fifteen people look at the same memory at the same time. Only practical to have an enormous one on site."

"But we aren't fifteen people," Harry said as he handed her his outer robes. Once the crimson slipped inside the closet space, the two of them blended into the background with dark jumpers and pants.

"No," Hermione said with a small smile. "But I can nearly guarantee we won't be bothered here. And the memory we need is already in this room, and I don't want to risk taking it to Hogwarts or Grimmauld Place where Sirius might come across it."

Harry frowned, his eyes searching Hermione's face as she pulled a small vial from a drawer near the hidden closet. "Before we go into this, is there anything I should know? Some context?"

"You're using your Auror-voice, your interrogation voice," Hermione teased, but she didn't keep him waiting. "You know how I've been working towards my Animagus form? I can't tell you why, it's classified, but I've found it. I thought I would be a bird of some sort."

Harry wanted desperately to ask her to show him what she was, she could tell by the open curiosity on his face. Only a few years before, he'd discovered his was a falcon, a surprise to his friends who assumed he'd take the same form as his father, and his Patronus. Draco collected several galleons with a self-satisfied smirk as falcon-Harry perched on the top of a bookshelf. Hermione had declined to bet against the man who'd spent years working alongside Harry in the Auror unit, and even longer in the man's bed.

"You'll see it once we get into the memory pool, I promise. The memory is mine and I transform in the middle of it so I'll warn you when to close your eyes so you won't get seasick from it. I didn't want Sirius seeing who I saw at the site."

If she didn't have his attention before, she had it now. "Who did you see, Hermione? Who attacked us?"

Staring into the shimmering pool instead of into Harry's face, her features looked aged much beyond her almost-forty years. "Someone we haven't dealt with in ages. I can't be sure of what I saw, so I need your eyes." She tilted her head to look at Harry out of the corner of her eye, still not meeting his gaze. "I won't jump to the conclusion of Death Eaters but...sympathizers?"

Harry rolled up the sleeves of his jumper, revealing several scars he'd earned over his tenure in the Auror department, and stepped to stand next to Hermione. Taking her hand in his, he took a step closer to the pool. "Show me."


	6. The Pensieve Room

_Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos. - Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel_

* * *

"Close your eyes, Harry."

Hermione breathed deeply the air in her memory, the faint smell of moss and rainwater calming her. It depended on whose memory it was how the five senses interacted with it. This memory was pulled from her time in her Animagus form, so the smells and sounds of nature were amplified beyond what a human would sense, as were the shadows at play around them with the improved vision it afforded as well.

"Now?" Harry asked.

"Yes, now you can open them." She let him turn a full circle before speaking again. "This is Dartmoor, it's around midnight last April. Easter hols? You'll want to focus away from the horizon for this memory before we move to the next."

"Are we not viewing these in order? You mentioned this started back at the Veil."

"No, not chronologically. I've organized them so they're easier to understand, put them in order." Biting her lip she nodded her head in the direction she'd asked him to look.

Two robed figures, cowls drawn up around their faces to fully obscure them even with balls of light from what looked like wands at this distance, jogged over a hill and down to the rocky, mossy valley where Harry and Hermione waited. Hermione remained silent and let Harry absorb the scene on his own without the conclusions she'd already made cloud him, in the event he noticed something she didn't. The soft ground beneath them gave way and the one closer to the two onlookers slipped down the rest of the hill to plop noisily into the muck by their feet. Even though they knew logically the memory person couldn't run into them, Hermione and Harry stepped back to avoid the spray of mud.

"Damn it!"

Harry quirked an eyebrow at Hermione as the figure swore, pulling himself, gender apparent by the baritone voice though his face was still covered, out of the mud. The voice echoed a bit in a way other sounds weren't distorted in the memory.

Hermione paused the scene with a pinch of her fingers long enough to explain, "Using translation charms in a memory, especially one taken from an Animagus point of view, makes the words a bit muffled. They're speaking Spanish."

Once Harry nodded, the scene sped up again.

"Keep running, you idiot! He's not far behind-gah!"

Interrupted mid-sentence, the second figure coming back to assist the first fell flat on his back and scrabbled gloved fingers at his throat, trying to untie the knot of the cowl that started to tighten around his throat. The first man got to his hands and knees in the mud before he started to choke, too. Black mist that had been building inside of the natural fog of the moor collected around the two men sprawled in the valley. A roar that started quiet enough to be missed as possibly an airplane flying overhead grew until it rang inside of Harry and Hermione's heads like a gong, stopping abruptly as the two men fell limp, the hoods of their robes finally falling away to reveal desecrated faces stuck in horrified expressions, the skin taut and sallow over easily defined bones, gums receded from the teeth enough to reveal part of their jawbones. Harry moved to lean over the bodies and inspect them further, but Hermione held onto his sleeve.

The black mist still curling around the bodies, easy to miss in the darkness now that the wand lights were extinguished, landed on the exposed skin and filled the crevices of the gaunt faces.

"What the hell.." Harry whispered beside her, eyes transfixed to the growing darkness in the skin of the dead men.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, but at the same moment first one robed body, then the next, jolted like they'd been struck by lightning. The limbs shook for a few moments and then lay still.

Still, Hermione remained silent, letting Harry watch, and watching him in return. She knew what happened next. She could remember the smell of brimstone in the black mist with cloying clarity as it floated away from the bodies once more, leaving behind what appeared to be unmarked men. She still felt the tremble in her fur as the air rushed past her, actually standing many meters away from all that was happening here, afraid to step closer to what she witnessed.

Where sunken cheeks and ravaged gums once were, pink flushes of perfect health and bright, blinking eyes appeared instead. In the space of minutes, the men died before them, plain by the pall of death in the air the two were too familiar with after years of fighting, and were reanimated by a force that even in a memory made Hermione feel like vomiting.

Harry, stunned into silence as he watched the two corpses stand, charm dirt from their robes, and continue running the direction they were headed before, took a few heartbeats before he turned to Hermione. His eyes glanced at her face and to either side of her as she watched his brain flip through several options before settling on, "How?"

"Not inferi. Not horcruxes. The magic felt different than that. What did the conjured mist remind you of?"

If Harry minded her professor-style interrogation, he didn't show it. Rather he grasped at the normalcy of Hermione knowing more than him and providing a bit of light on the subject, even as she was trying to let the Auror come to his own conclusion.

"Death Eaters. But you said it wasn't Death Eaters?"

"No, I said I wouldn't jump to that conclusion."

"Damnit, you sound like Dumbledore, Hermione!"

Hermione's lips thinned and she crossed her arms. "I'll forget you said that. I want to make sure my...emotions weren't clouding my judgement of what I've gathered since Sirius came through the Veil. So far we're on the same track. Death Eater style mist comes across two Spanish wizards running through Dartmoor, presumably away from something by the tone of their conversation, kills them and reanimates them in the same amount of time it takes to brew tea. I don't think that it is out of the question to assume that these two things are connected. Did these two men summon the mist? I'm not sure. But this is the catalyst. Quot to assume that these two things are connected. Did these two men summon the mist? I'm not sure. But this is the catalyst."

Harry bit his lip as he absorbed everything Hermione he was explaining to him. He looked at her with a blank face and asked, "What does this have to do with the connection between you and Sirius?"

After an admittedly dramatic intake of breath, she said, "Everything."

He snorted. "Now you really sound like Dumbledore."

The look on her face sobered him immediately, and he drew her into a quick hug. She threw a lackluster punch to his hip in repayment for his comment, careful to miss his healing ribs, and rested her head against his chest. With her face still buried in his bright red Auror robes, Harry couldn't make out what she said next.

"Sorry, love?" he asked, pulling her away so he could search her face.

"Are you ready for the next few memories?" she repeated, wiping at her face to discard the tears of frustration, hating that she cried when she was angry and confused though she knew Harry didn't give a shit about it.

"Absolutely. Lead on."

Moving their way through the incident at the Ministry next, the one that brought Sirius through the Veil, Harry watched all six hours of the fight leading to the culmination in rapid time. Hermione skipped ahead several times to get through the moments where Ogden had stopped or slowed time. Everything skidded to a halt when they reached the final twenty minutes, when they watched Hermione walk through the barrier erected around the Veil and into Ogden's sphere of influence.

Harry paced around and looked at everything he could, asking her to rewind a couple of parts several times. In full blown Auror mode, Hermione's chest swelled with hope at the sight of Harry so focused on the task at hand and waited with bated breath until he looked to her for more information.

"Ogden's calculations weren't wrong, Harry," she started, crossing and uncrossing her arms as she explained the basis of her research and dismay. "He should have been able to bring Voldemort through the Veil but the best I can figure is that there's nothing left for him to pull through. Only a small fraction of his soul remained in his physical body when you vanquished him in 1998. Everything else was obliterated since it was destroyed as a Horcrux with Basilisk venom, or the Killing Curse, or other methods.

"Without something there to call, the gates of...Hell or whatever it is behind that Veil, purgatory? The gates of Limbo couldn't give him what he wanted but it didn't stop him from trying. That caused all the mayhem in the first place and alerted the Department to his meddling in the Death Room."

Harry nodded to show he followed so far. "So if Voldemort couldn't come back, why did he get Sirius through?"

Hermione bit back a sigh of frustration. "Bellatrix. The only missing link between Voldemort and Sirius is Bellatrix. She's dead, too, and could have come through if Ogden had tried so thank Merlin and Circe he didn't manage that. I...I don't know what I would have done if that bitch crawled through the Veil and landed on me like she did at Malfoy Manor."

She didn't realize she was rubbing her neck where the silvery curse scar remained until Harry pulled her hand away. One raised eyebrow, definitely a trait he'd collected from Draco, asked her if she was okay to continue.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. She was...she was the closest to Voldemort after he came back the second time, though I have no idea who was his right hand before the war except perhaps Lucius, but from the records of the Death Eater trials I reviewed in the Archives and quotes from Karkaroff and others no one knew for sure who the others were that first time. Security, maybe? Insurance against defectors, or pure paranoia? It doesn't matter but it does make me think the reason it skipped from Bellatrix to Sirius is their blood connection and-"

"Hermione. Hermione breathe."

Harry's hands on her shoulders and soft smile on his face calmed her enough to start matching her breathing to his. The technique was something she'd taught him after the war to help manage his panic attacks. Once she matched his breathing pattern she closed her eyes and concentrated until she moved the memory around them to the exact moment she fell to the stairs next to the unconscious body of her former Department Head. She watched the scene of Sirius propelled out of the Veil like he'd fallen out of it instead of into it each time Harry rewound and repeated it. He paused it at the moment Sirius landed on his hands and knees and started to bellow for Bellatrix to come out of hiding.

"He's...he's glowing a bit," he said, kneeling down to look more closely. "And so are you. It looks like that bubble of magic Ogden created rained down on you or something."

"The Sealing Rite," Hermione explained simply. "He called his work on this wretched plan The Sealing Rite in his notebooks that we confiscated from his home. This spell was meant to bind Voldemort to his will, a way to control the beast."

Slowly nodding, Harry looked away from the gaunt face of his godfather. He stood slowly, taking in his surroundings and started to brush off his knees and halted, turning to look at her.

Hermione stood with her arms tightly folded and her lip which was white from how hard she was biting it. She knew he understood by the way his jaw lowered slightly in surprise.

"Sealing Rite. Hermione you mean that the spell bound Sirius to you?" Harry watched as she wiped away the tears of frustration that started again as she nodded. "That's why you barely talk to him, right? Because he would have to do what you say?" Another nod and Harry was running his hands through his hair. "Bloody hell!"

"Hell is right," Hermione said in a small voice. She twisted the sleeve of her robe nervously. She bit her lip and let spill the information she'd been keeping under lock and key from everyone for far too long. "I realized I could control him when I felt this...tug each time we talked after he came through the Veil. When we were helping him acclimate to what had happened? Reintroducing him to everyone? He would calm instantly whenever I asked him to, when memories became too much for him. He would act drugged, and I can't do that to him. I can't be another cage for him to be trapped in."

The pair were silent as they left the memory, Harry unsure what to say to comfort her and Hermione emotionally and mentally exhausted. They sat together in the Pensieve Room with Harry holding Hermione as she cried.

* * *

 _January 9th, 2016 - I very much appreciate the attention this story is receiving. Please let me know if you have questions, or what you like about it! This story should hopefully not take too much longer to be complete, I have it outlined as a total of ten chapters at least._


	7. Seasickness

_Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man. - Henry Adams_

* * *

Teddy lifted his father in a huge hug, spinning Remus until he pounded on his son's back to put him down again. The bright smiles across their faces distorted any feigned annoyance at the display, both men much too excited about the Mastery of Ancient Runes scroll held to Tonk's chest. He was much gentler with his mother, the evidence of his newest sibling preventing him from giving her a proper hug, but neither minded one bit. Looking around, he caught sight of his godparents jogging over to their happy group.

Hermione's blank face spread into a smile almost as wide as Teddy's as she got closer and could tell they were celebrating his completion of Mastery instead of waiting in anxious silence for the results. While she rushed to hug Teddy, and was treated to the same spinning Remus received, Harry leant over to grab James who was watching the proceedings with wide yellow eyes.

"Harry, I'm too old to be picked up!" he protested, his little fists flying as he resisted the hug from behind.

"Nonsense, James," Harry said to the boy, craning his head around to place a quick kiss to the child's cheek before blowing a loud raspberry. "Never too old for a hug."

Giggling despite trying to put on a serious expression, the nine year old put his hands on his hips and ran to hide behind his mother again. Tonks looked down for a moment, but returned to her conversation with her cousin after placing a hand on her son's head. Sirius started making faces at the boy as he peeked around looking at Sirius and Harry and still giggling madly.

Teddy and Hermione quietly spoke, each pair of eyes shining with the threat of tears after the culmination of three years of training found its conclusion.

"Will you go with me to get my tattoo?" Teddy asked, wiping under his glasses to get rid of the few tears stuck to his lashes.

"Of course!" Hermione said. "You didn't meant right now, did you?"

Laughing, he put an arm around her shoulders before Hermione could pull away from the physical affection, and Teddy said, "No, probably not until after Christmas. I need to think about what I'm getting, and where."

"You haven't already decided?"

"Well," Teddy said, biting his lip as he guided her along towards the exits lifts, everyone else filing behind the pair with boisterous conversation. "I wasn't exactly sure that...well…"

Hermione pinched the arm slung over her shoulders and exclaimed, "You didn't think you would pass! Are you kidding me, Teddy?"

His blush was enough answer for her, so she put her hand around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder as the family walked out of the Ministry in a happy huddle. If she'd turned to look behind her, she would have caught the sight of Harry and Sirius in deep conversation, James swinging between them.

* * *

Harry traced a figure 8 into the plush carpet on the floor of his bedroom, watching his nail sink beneath the fibers and relishing in the lazy pull of the carpet against his skin. It matched the tempo of Draco's hands tracing the scars on Harry's back for what had to have been the thousandth time.

"She did not specifically tell you _not_ to tell me?" his husband drawled behind him, the fingers beginning to push with purpose against a knot they found at the back of Harry's neck. The cold of Draco's wedding band brushed against Harry's shoulder as his left hand held on for leverage to work out the knot but warmed quickly.

Losing himself for a moment to the calming sensation of peaceful togetherness with Draco, wrapped in the blankets that had followed them off the side of the bed, Harry closed his eyes. "No, I think she is too in her own head to ask for help, or doesn't know how to approach it so she told me knowing I would likely tell you."

Once the muscle beneath his fingers gave way, Draco halted the pressure and pulled Harry more snugly against him, pulling the blankets over their shoulders. Harry was used to Draco thinking through things silently, the exact dichotomy of his best friend's method. Warm and entangled as he was, Harry nearly fell asleep before Draco spoke again.

"I'm going to reopen Ogden's case."

"Hmm," Harry hummed in question, turning to face Draco and wincing as he almost got a rug burn on his thigh. "How will that help? We don't have any new public evidence against him, and he's already in Azkaban."

"I need to see his spellwork and those files are sealed. We need to get into it somehow to find out the exact nature of this bond."

Harry sat up to lean against the bed frame, the line of the mattress pressing into his bare back, and he pulled on Draco's languid form until he sat up next to him. He ran his fingers through the blond hair at the nape of Draco's neck and the fleeting thought that he needed a haircut rain through his mind. The men sat in silence for a few more moments before the morning sunlight peeked through the blinds, warning that Saturday would pass without them unless they got up off the floor.

As Harry did up the last button on his jeans, he heard Draco call his name from the living room of their London townhouse. He couldn't tell if it were excitement or distress coloring his voice from this distance so he sprinted down the stairs with his jumper trailing in one hand behind him like a banner.

The bright eyes of Remus's wolf Patronus turned to Harry as he skidded to a halt at the door, wand drawn, and melted into nothingness after a bark.

"Tonks is at St. Mungo's!" Draco said with cheeks flushed with happiness. He ran past the slightly panting Harry up the stairs to his wardrobe room to collect a set of black robes. "Time to make some galleons."

Harry grinned and ran up after him, yanking the jumper on backwards in his haste to get a set of robes as well. "I refuse to get between this stupid bet you and Sirius have going," he said, muffled as he twisted the jumper on the right way. "You both think you know if it's going to be a boy or girl."

"Godfather's perk, I know I'm right." Draco said.

"Oh, my god," Harry said while rolling his eyes. He kept the teasing light since he knew Draco was still a little giddy over being named the child's godparent along with Luna Lovegood.

Within another five minutes the pair swept through the Floo to St. Mungo's.

* * *

Hermione pulled open the door to the stairwell she'd sprinted up in St Mungo's in time to see Remus walk by with two cups of tea in his hands. He was entirely focused on the Styrofoam cups and didn't notice her come up behind him until she called out a greeting and offered to take one of the teas from his hand.

"Thanks," he said, using his free hand to push back his hair nervously. "You'd think I'd be used to this now, after Teddy and James."

Hermione grasped his elbow and guided him along the hallway where she could make out Harry and Draco keeping James company. "It's what you do best, Remus. Worry. Mother hen."

That coaxed a self-deprecating laugh out of the werewolf and she felt her job done.

Draco nodded at her as she approached, still holding the tea that Remus had mentioned he was bringing from the canteen for Harry. Passing the drink to her best friend, Hermione moved to lean on the wall next to Draco in the waiting room a stone's throw from the room Tonks was in.

"You've got some ink just there," the blond said with a long finger pointing to her chin. "Falling asleep at work again, Granger?"

Her skin flushed in embarrassment, taking the proffered mirror from Draco to charm away the mark. She skirted the question with one of her own. "How long have you two been here?"

"About an hour," he said as he took the mirror back.

As she nodded and turned to smile a hello at James, who was quite engrossed in trying to braid the longest piece of Harry's hair he could find so he could "practice in case he had a sister", Hermione tried very hard not to laugh at the spectacle they created. How Draco stayed so composed she didn't know but a glance at his face revealed a look she'd observed on the Malfoy heir's face several times: a look of longing as the man watched his husband play with the child. She would try to make a point of helping bring up the topic of adoption with Harry again, for Draco's sake.

"Is that everyone, then?"

Hermione was jolted out of her musings over the way she could help bridge the topic Draco obviously wanted to bring up to Harry by the sound of Sirius' voice. How hadn't she noticed him earlier striding down the stairs? As soon as she saw him walk over and hug Remus with a grin bright enough to shame the sun, nausea started building in the back of her throat, halting her from speaking at all.

Draco slid a hand into hers between their bodies so only Harry could see the motion of comfort. "We're waiting for Luna. She's godmother."

The beam switched to a wicked grin without warning and the nausea twisted within Hermione as Sirius looked hungrily at Draco. "My newest nephew won't be waiting for her, she'd better get a move on."

"Hardly. My _goddaughter_ will have impeccable timing, just like her godparents."

Remus rolled his eyes and slipped back into the hospital room, followed by two Healers. The atmosphere of the group was light, excited, and far too much for Hermione to handle.

She thought, for everyone's sake, she would try to be present at the birth of the next Lupin child, but the way her palms grew sweaty she wasn't sure she could even be in the same building as Sirius just then. The pull to speak to him was almost unbearable and she couldn't untangle the knots of what she could recognize as the magic of Ogden's spell and the butterflies of her own infatuation-tinged nervousness. Draco smoothed his thumb along her knuckles the same way that Harry did when he held her hand, and it helped the same way an ice cube soothes a third-degree burn.

Even the smell of the hospital, not even the presence of Sirius, had her on edge, and memories of the Curse Ward flitted out from her Occlumency shields.

 _I need to get…_

"Tea?"

Hermione started in surprise as Luna interrupted her thoughts. How she'd missed the woman's arrival, with her lurid red robes a bright flame even in the fluorescent lighting of the waiting room, she couldn't guess. Her thought originally ended with _out of here_ , but she took Luna's suggestion of tea as the next best option.

"Canteen," she managed to choke out before breaking her hand out of Draco's and guiding Luna away from the rest.

Once they were sufficiently away from the wizards keeping James preoccupied, Hermione glanced at Luna, wincing. "Thanks. Do we have time to talk?"

Luna nodded and swiped her hand in a jerky motion as they passed a closed door halfway down the hall. Her wand appeared from her sleeve at the command and she cast what sounded like _muffliato_.

"The child will wait for me," she explained. "Have you spoken to him, yet?"

"Harry? Yes, I did." Hermione busied herself with the pot of hot water in the small canteen, taking her time selecting which cheap tea she wanted to subject herself to.

Luna jumped to sit on the counter nearby. "You can say his name, Hermione. They can't hear us."

Grinding her teeth together, Hermione jabbed her hand into the basket like a cobra pouncing on a mouse and didn't even take note of what kind she opened, dropping it unceremoniously into the hot water waiting. Her voice came out in a hiss that matched her actions. "It hurts to speak it."

"Good. That means you're closer to breaking."

Hermione had to stop herself from pouring the scalding liquid all down Luna's front, counting down from ten as the walls started to burn with their perfect white paint, reminding herself that she could help. Luna already had helped her so much. And Harry. All of them, truly. Luna was the one who stayed up and guarded Grimmauld Place when she and Harry went there to grieve Ron's death several years before. They lost in so much pain that they didn't know how to handle; she had fed them, made sure they truly slept even if the first few times she'd had to hypnotize them, but she was there.

Hermione knew without Luna's help, Harry would still blame himself. Ron had stepped in as a civilian to fight a legion of Dementors created in some crazed wizard's laboratory, set loose on Diagon Alley where he helped the twins in their joke shop. Not everyone could cast a Patronus, and several desperate curses ranging from slicing hexes to darker homemade curses flew through the air before the Aurors arrived; whether murder or manslaughter, Ron's death was never solved. The smell of the hospital only served to exacerbate those memories, the last time she had been inside of St. Mungo's, watching Ron's body be carried away from them.

Her nails tried to bite into the stone countertop between the carafe of hot water and Luna's thigh, only bending back painfully into her skin instead. As if she were underwater, her voice sounded muffled and far away. "What do I do?

"Wait until after the child is born," Luna said, placing a hand on Hermione's shoulder to steady her swaying movements, moving in time to an unseen ship's deck. "But before the curtain rises, you need to bring Sirius into the fold."

The hand on Hermione's shoulder slid down to her lower back as Luna hopped down. A few pushes with Luna's fingers found the pressure points on Hermione's back, the scars left behind after the battle that brought Sirius through the Veil, that helped to clear her vision.

"The child will wait for me a while longer, but I don't want Nymphadora to be in any more pain than necessary. Harry will perform the godparent rites for Draco and myself instead of you. It will help him with what you observed with Draco before, they will know what to say."

Hermione nodded and swallowed back the surge of nausea that rose after Luna's hands stopped soothing her scars, still leaning over the counter like the railing of a ship and wondering if she would be sick everywhere. Years of knowing the witch, though never really understanding her, stopped her from thinking too hard on her comments. She was used to Luna just...knowing everything.

"Go, go...I'll follow when I can."

The bubble of the _muffliato_ popped as the last tassel of Luna's robes swept around the door frame. Hermione lifted the tea bag out of the cup and tried to sip at the cooling liquid for some measure of comfort. The reactions to the exacerbated magic coating her skin and soul clouded her mind enough to ignore that she'd let it steep much too long.

As much as she hated herself for doing so, she turned left instead of right out of the canteen, thundering down the stairs as fast as she could to put distance between herself and the bane of her soul.

* * *

 _ **January 11th, 2017** \- I have no idea how I wrote this so quickly, possibly because I'm avoiding other responsibilities, but who's keeping track?_

 _I would love to hear your feedback. Already some reviews have helped point out where I am missing pieces of information or have things that need clarification, thank you to those of you that have left your comments already._


	8. Confrontation

_It seems like the chaos of this world is accelerating, but so is the beauty in the consciousness of more and more people - Anthony Kiedis_

* * *

Adrienne Holly Lupin was born without much of a fuss compared to her brothers, and quietly gurgled throughout the entire process of her naming and godparent ceremonies. Harry beamed, and Remus cried, and James couldn't stop running in circles with his hands over his mouth in order to contain his excited squealing long enough to let his mother and sister sleep.

Sirius watched the girl's chest rise and fall as she slept in the bassinette, feeling another little piece of the puzzle that was his confusing life fall into place. He scratched a bit at one of the scars on his arm, where Remus had marked him as Pack several decades ago, as a new swirl joined the others to represent Adrienne. There was a little ball of warmth growing in his chest as he realized that Adrienne was one of the first children born after the war with her own name, not one that represented someone that they'd lost like James or Teddy, or even Ginny and Theo's daughter Lily. His throat clenched tighter as he tried not to think about how he was one of those names until recently.

People slowly trickled away from the hospital room as the Healers insisted that Tonks be allowed to rest and feed her daughter in peace, allowing for important bonding time. Taking the sleeve of Draco's jumper, Sirius pulled the man away from staring at the sleeping baby, knowing that Harry would follow like there was a literal string tied between he and his husband.

"How's it healing?" Sirius asked, nodding his head to the prick on Draco's forearm, the sleeve of his button up shirt and sweater rolled up to the crook of his right arm.

"Fine, thanks. It doesn't hurt."

"Good, it shouldn't. It's a Pack seal after all and those are bonds of good intentions."

Harry beamed as he looked at his husband, knowing exactly the odd euphoria that Draco felt as the new godfather and full Pack bonds meshed into his magical core. "I'll get him home, I think," Harry said in indulgent tones. "He'll get lost in this state."

"'M not drunk, Potter," Draco protested, though he stumbled a bit and leaned more heavily into Harry on their walk down the hallway.

"Of course you're not, this is worse."

"This doesn't get you out of paying up on your bet, cousin!" Draco called over his shoulder.

Sirius shook his head in amusement as he followed the men down the hallway. "You'll forget by morning, cousin!"

He itched to have a cigarette and a shower, his healing bones still crawling under his skin though Luna had insisted that would stop soon. His magical core had nearly been depleted after the attack in October, when he'd used almost all of it to protect Harry from the worst of...whatever had happened to the. The thoughts of those two weeks formed a few storm clouds covering up the sunny happiness of the day, so he worked to brush them away for now. No sense marring the birthday of his newest niece with troubling memories of black hoods, dark mist, and the burning touch of someone whose face he couldn't place.

* * *

Teddy cooed at his sister softly, running his finger along an apple cheek, and leaned a little closer so the near-sighted infant could watch the way he changed his hair color slowly. Adrienne hadn't shown any of the signs of metamorphmagus abilities that Teddy carried, or the bright yellow eyes of werewolf offspring, but the tuft of hair on her head showed signs of sandy blond of their father. When her grandmother saw the girl's eyes for the first time, Andromeda hugged the girl a little closer, insisting that shade of brown belonged to Grandpa Ted.

"You are lovely, Adrienne," he said as she stared at him, squirming in her blanket.

Tonks walked into the living room of the Lupin Den, scratching at her head as she yawned, messing her hair up spectacularly. "Thanks, Teddy. I'll take her, I need to feed her."

"She's changed," he said as he carefully transferred his sister to his mother's arms.

"Good lad," she said, moving to tousle her son's hair as thoroughly as her own as she walked away, earning a chuckle and indignant exclamation.

"I'm headed to Grimmauld, you need me for anything today?" Teddy asked as he leaned over to tie his trainers. He missed the way his mother bit her lip and her eyes flashed silver. "I'm going to meet up with Harry, Draco and a few others to go flying. Then maybe pop over to Hermione's."

Adrienne released a soft cry when her mother's attention left her face and the soft movement of being carried stopped, distracting Tonks enough to reply, "No, that's fine. Have a good time and thanks for coming over this morning. Your dad and I haven't slept much this month." She spoke directly to her daughter so the sleepy admission came out as a bright and cheery sound rather than showing the exhaustion she was really feeling.

Teddy planted a quick kiss to first his sister's then mother's cheeks, grabbing his guitar that was leaning against an armchair, before slipping out the front door and popping away with soft Apparition.

* * *

Grimmauld Place looked as though a hurricane had forced its way inside when Teddy walked through the front door, narrowly missing a flying roll of parchment before it spun away towards the study again.

"What the fuck is going on!" he yelled over the ruckus, fighting his way through parchment, feathers from a broken pillow that the house elf was fretting over, and other detritus.

At the center of the mess destroying the room stood Hermione and Sirius. The two of them were inches apart from each other and screaming by the looks on their faces but no sound left the privacy bubble surrounding them. Teddy cast his gaze around to find Harry, or Draco, or someone to help stop this madness and decided to take action himself.

"FINITE INCANTATEM!"

With a blast the arguing pair were blown apart to opposite sides of the room, each landing on a chair or lounge as best as Teddy could aim. An anticlimactic rustle filled the silence as the previously flying items settled on tables and chairs. Angrily, Teddy pointed his wand towards the fireplace to lock the Floo in this room, slamming the doors behind him.

"What. The fuck. Is going on?" Teddy repeated breathlessly, alternating pointing is wand at his uncle and his godmother. He decided on Sirius since he'd collected himself faster than Hermione. "You. You start."

"Butt out of this Teddy," Sirius warned, using his hands on his knees to stand up and glare in Hermione's direction.

"No. I have no clue what the hell you two are fighting about, destroying this study that neither of you have the right - no shut up, Sirius - neither of you have the right to destroy. This is Harry's house as you are so fond of reminding us. Sit down. Shut up. Talk."

"Teddy, this isn't the best time-"

"Obviously, Hermione," Teddy snapped, "it's the best fucking time. You two seemed to be doing just fine, what, airing grievances a few seconds ago. I am sick of watching the two of you skirt rooms and avoid each other since that Godric's Hollow mess that no one is talking about only to find you both causing some sort of magical disturbance. I repeat - what the fuck is going on?"

"I'd like to know that myself," Sirius said through his teeth.

The silence stretched for a minute or two before Hermione sat down sharply onto a couch in the middle of the room. Teddy noted her hands were shaking before she shoved them into her armpits, crossing her arms defiantly as she looked into the fireplace.

"As I was saying before, there isn't time to just talk about this. The Veil won't wait."

"The Veil?" Teddy said. He looked from one person then the other, one pacing with balled fists and the other sitting as still as stone. "This has to do with the Veil?"

"Veil this, Veil that, I'm sick of hearing about the Veil!"

That made Hermione stand up and a crackle of sparks fly through her hair as quick as a whip. "Sirius! It's unavoidable! Everything I've researched, all the tests I've done...you can't just discard that as inconvenient to you so it doesn't apply."

"Can you make time to explain, Hermione?" Teddy asked. Few knew Hermione still held onto a stolen Time Turner, and she rarely was without it.

To her credit she didn't reach up to fiddle with the chain around her neck nervously like he expected her to do. She shook her head. "That won't work with this, we can't fool it by going back in time. I can't be sure but it might make whatever is happening here worse."

Though Teddy still didn't understand, he trusted Hermione to tell the truth. By now he'd lowered his wand but still kept the charms blocking the Floo and locking the study door operative while he tried to figure out what was happening and what the next move should be. He watched the two of them and felt the static of tension increase by the second, only momentarily reduced by him surprising the pair into brief submission.

"Sirius?" Teddy called, hand resting on the door to the study.

His father's best friend glared into the fireplace, smouldering now, his hands shaking a bit before reaching into his pocket for the ever-present pack of cigarettes.

"Fuck it all," he grumbled, turning to blast past Teddy to follow Hermione out the front door.


	9. Luck

_Chaos magic is the idea that a particular set of beliefs serves as an active force in the world. In other words, we choose what and how we believe, and our beliefs are tools that we then use to make things happen...or not. - Sophia Amoruso_

* * *

Teddy detested not understanding what was happening around him, especially when it involved carrying his wand, the guitar he'd forgotten was still on his back, and trailing behind a pair of his family that were at each other's throats only an hour before.

The Ministry was blessedly quiet on a Sunday afternoon, only a few stray memos floating around the atrium as they delivered weather reports or other inconsequential information. His guitar made small thrumming noise each time he took a step down a marble staircase in the Department of Mysteries. After spending an uncomfortable three minutes going down the elevator with Sirius and Hermione, the movement was welcome. Once while they were in a relatively crowded street in London, before reaching the Ministry, he'd attempted to make conversation to figure out what was wrong.

"You owe Harry new couch cushions," he said quietly, feeling a bit spiteful still from his anger and confusion at the both of them.

Sirius glared over the top of his cigarette. The light at the end seemed to highlight the dark circles beneath his eyes. Teddy caught a glimpse of the man that was sent to Azkaban for crimes he didn't commit, but he didn't stand down. It was bullshit the way they were acting and if Sirius got pissed at him for a comment like that, in the words of his mother, he would be getting an attitude adjustment before he could say Quidditch.

However, that was the worst of it. Neither of them rose to his bait. Likely because of the public forum. Their silence felt stronger here, out of the light of day, pressed between shoppers and tourists above ground.

"Care to explain anything now, Hermione?" Teddy said. The strap of his guitar was starting to itch against his neck but there was no way he would be leaving it anywhere out of his sight: the body was signed by three Weird Sisters band members.

"Magical imbalance," was all she offered as she brought out her wand.

With a few short movements, jerky since the trembling in her hands had worsened since he'd last noticed in Grimmauld, she provided a magical passcode to the door in front of them. Sirius kept tapping his fingers against his dark jeans and Teddy recognized it as the tic for when he desperately wanted a cigarette. Standing behind the two of them, Teddy stuck as close as a shadow walking into the front lobby of the Department of Mysteries. No one sat behind the desk that grew from the floor like a stone knuckle of a giant's hand, white veins spreading across the dark marble that met seamlessly with the floor. The office was barren.

Hermione took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder at them before jerking her chin towards a door at their right. As they walked she lifted her hair away from her neck to pile into a nest on top of her head. If Teddy saw Sirius stare fixedly at the exposed knots of vertebrae revealed by the motion, he didn't say anything.

"Holden Ogden rose to Head of the Department of Mysteries while Kingsley was Minister for Magic, right after Harry defeated Voldemort at Hogwarts. There were so many lackeys in charge at the Ministry that Kingsley was hard pressed to find qualified candidates but Ogden was the obvious choice from the get-go. He toed the line between defiant against the newer regulations set by Voldemort but stayed close enough to the rules that he kept his team safe."

Teddy recalled the name of the man who used to be Hermione's boss and had accidentally summoned Sirius back from the Veil. He expected Sirius to interrupt. He didn't.

"The department strengthened with his leadership. Even before I was invited five years ago, I knew something was changing down here. Almost like an infection of peace spreading through the Ministry as swiftly as Voldemort's rhetoric spread only a few years before."

"Sounds too good to be true," Teddy said.

Hermione looked over her shoulder at him with a nod, turning back to guide them through another set of locked doors. "Yeah. We were desperate for any semblance of good. Harry and Ron joined the Aurors even before Hogwarts was rebuilt, the world was still terrified. Voldemort had disappeared and returned before so we had a lot of work to do to convince them he really was gone for good.

"I don't know how long Ogden was planning to use the Veil for his own devices, but his notes change from 'what ifs' to 'will bes' only a month or two after the Final Battle. He decided who he wanted to call back through the Veil to obey his wishes, he just needed to figure out how to do it."

"He tried to call Lord Voldemort?" The stunned look on Sirius's face matched the incredulity in Teddy's voice. "What did he expect would happen?"

Chewing on her lip, Hermione leaned her head side to side as she deliberated something. It didn't take long for her to make her decision with a huff. "From what he described in his journals, he devised a way to call someone, or at least a shadow of them. Remember the runes you studied, Teddy, that Muggles devised based off of scrolls from the Middle Ages? Twisted rituals to call demons from hell? Same concept.

"Ogden wanted the piece of Voldemort he thought remained alive, in a way, to be under his influence. The terrifying thing is, if even the smallest Horcrux had survived, he would have succeeded in connecting that piece of soul with something corporeal. He would have brought him back again. But there wasn't anything left of Voldemort to call back. There was no way for him to know that until he'd started his ritual in this chamber, but the spell was powerful enough that no matter what, he would find someone to claim."

The elephant in the room hung over them until they reached Hermione's office and she started rummaging through her files.

"Why me?" Sirius asked. He stayed outside of the small room and furtively checked up and down the hall every minute or so, but kept his gaze trained on Hermione the rest of the time.

Hermione dithered at her desk, not looking up for a solid minute while the question fermented in the air. "Because of Bellatrix. When Ogden couldn't pull Tom Riddle through, since there isn't anything of him left to pull, he tried to find the next best thing."

She extracted a long and thin roll of paper from a false bottom in a drawer and stood to face Sirius, truly look at him, for the first time since entering the Ministry.

"Bellatrix was completed destroyed by Molly. The same kind of 'Mother's love' magic that helped save Harry when he was a baby fueled her when that crazy bitch attacked Ginny. By this point my hypothesis is I managed to interrupt his attempts to call a thrall from beyond the Veil, and disrupted the magic's summons."

"Your hypothesis?" Sirius asked.

"Do you really think there is a fucking book on this, Black? A 'Beginner's Guide to Necromancy' I have _hidden up my_ -"

"Stop it!" Teddy snapped, clapping his hands once between the two who were gearing up for another row. Sirius had pushed away from the wall with fists clenched and Hermione's eyes were lit dangerously. "Back to the hypothesis."

With a deep breath through her nose, her eyes still trained on Sirius, Hermione continued. "Yes. I disrupted the summons and the casting was advanced enough that when I apprehended Ogden, finally, the summon was already underway and had to be completed. There are so many reasons why it pulled you. You were the last to die by falling through the Veil, I was reminded of the last time I was in a duel in the room and how that ended, your blood relation to Bellatrix...in the end, it doesn't matter. As I was the conscious one closest to the Veil, the summon attached itself to me and pulled you through."

A few moments of silence passed. Hermione's voice had grown softer and calmer the longer she spoke, until her voice cracked on the last few words. Teddy's face fell as he started to understand what was happening, piecing the puzzle together from what she had and hadn't said.

Sirius Black was Hermione Granger's thrall.

"Just my fucking luck," Sirius muttered, slumping against the wall again.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said. Her voice was still strained.

This time when Sirius pushed away from the wall he moved with more focus, pulling Hermione into a hug before Teddy could have possibly stood between them. She shook in his arms and the room was silent for a long time. Long enough that Teddy could feel his leg fall asleep from the position he was sitting in on a spare chair. He felt as though he were intruding on something private, a dark thing desperately trying to be good and pure. He moved slowly from his seat to the hallway, closing the door behind him, unnoticed by the two still embracing. His guitar rested in his lap and he strummed soft chords as he afforded them a small measure of peace and privacy.


	10. Information

_Chaos breeds life, when order breeds habit. -Henry Adams_

* * *

"I don't want to trap you anymore."

Sirius breathed in the scent of Hermione's shampoo as he held her tighter. "You weren't the one to pull me through."

All things considered, he was taking it better than what Hermione had ever hoped. There was a cruel parallel with the man's Patronus, Animagus form, and the way he was nearly always captive or leashed in some way.

"But...this still doesn't explain why someone came after Harry and me."

Hermione moved away from the embrace slowly, reluctantly, and crossed her arms. She wanted to avoid his gaze but met him head on.

"The Ministry created my department here in the DoM specifically to hunt dark wizards." Sirius opened his mouth and she forged on before he could ask the obvious. "But we have the DMLE, right? Aurors? Well, the Ministry was a bit a shambles when it found out part of the truth behind how Voldemort managed to come back, Harry, too. The power to resurrect the dead is a little tempting. Our job was to find out all the ways different cultures describe life after death, the literal kind, and I was meant to study Muggles and the methods they use to keep people alive medically even after they should have died, or brought them back with CPR or-"

"CPR?"

"Sorry, I'm off track, it's a kind of resuscitation, like anapnea. Anyway. Ogden jumped at the chance, which should have been our first clue. He wasn't bold enough to embezzle all of his equipment and ingredients from the Ministry for his private experiments, so he funded that portion of his studies by working for hire. There are hundreds of wizard mercenaries around the world that have no true affiliation with any one belief or faction."

Sirius sat on the edge of Hermione's desk and rubbed the shaved side of his head as he considered what she was saying. "I'm aware of a few different groups around the world. I overheard my mother speaking to marksmen when I was young. The rules of engagement vary. She considered hiring someone to find me, I think, after I ran to the Potter's summer after fifth year."

Every time he opened up more about his childhood, Hermione ached a bit more. The memories didn't seem to distress Sirius to talk about which made it that much worse.

"The men that attacked you were from a group of mercenaries from Spain. They were likely hired by some of the lower-level Death Eaters associated with Ogden's work. He worked with them to get everything prepared for the third coming of their leader, the ones who were crazy enough to want him back, and when he died during his attempt they were obviously unhappy with their return on investment.

"And, though he had nothing to do with it this time, the mercs thought going after Harry would be the next best thing. You were likely something they didn't consider."

Sirius was quiet for several long minutes. The soft chords of Teddy's guitar filtered through the office door.

"You found us. How?" His voice was strained, hands pressed into her desk to keep him steady.

"Harry and I have been close friends for two decades working in highly dangerous departments. We figured a long time ago something might happen to one or both of us." Hermione unbuckled her left boot, working her foot out of it so she could pull the bottom of her pants up enough to show Sirius black ink marking her ankle. "This is a rune that works like a distress signal, something I designed from a couple different texts. It only works between the two of us, a direct connection. Harry called me with his when you were attacked."

Teddy's music stopped on the other side of the door, and Hermione folded her arms over her chest again.

"It's a lot to take in, Hermione," Sirius said. "I'm...I'm glad you're telling me all of this but I still feel like you're hiding something."

Hermione kept quiet, looking at the door to her office. With a sigh of resignation, Sirius stood up from the desk and held her steady when she put her boot back on.

Walking out together, Teddy stood to greet them. The heavy sound of her office door behind them held a sense of finality.

Teddy looked between them a couple times but was satisfied with what he saw, since he didn't say a word. Without preamble the group moved further into the confines of the Department of Mysteries towards their goal. Heavy oak doors greeted them with ominous promise, the air barely moving around them in the underground fortress. They had walked for several minutes in unadorned hallways to reach this point. After the battle in the Department during Hermione's fifth year, the department did away with the connection of the Veil Room to the Revolving Doors.

Cathedral high ceilings in the next room reverberated their steps until she felt like her head would explode from the sound. Her eyes and ears searched for any sort of indication that the darkness and silence weren't absolute. With a nervous clearing of her throat, Hermione said, "Welcome back to the Veil Room."


	11. The Veil Room

In all chaos there is cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. - Carl Jung

* * *

Teddy wondered what hid behind the other doors leading up to the set for the Veil Room when he felt it. A low and dark pull at his feet holding him in place, as if his boots were stuck in the mud of his family's garden. But, instead of happy childhood memories of springtime and rain he could only think of the traps set by illegal poachers he and his father would find in the woods behind the Den, sometimes with small creatures in them who weren't quite dead yet. Teddy looked over his shoulder to see if Sirius could feel it, too.

Sirius leaned against the wall opposite the door Hermione was unlocking, face as gaunt as Teddy had ever witnessed it. To stop his fingers from searching for a cigarette, they were fisting in the fabric of his leather jacket. Skin, always paler than what seemed healthy, looked almost grey in the flourescent lights of the hallway. Sirius's eyes watched Hermione like a starved dog stalking a rabbit.

"Sirius…" Teddy started, walking towards him.

A curt shake of Sirius's head stopped him. "I'll be alright, kid."

"You sure-"

"Teddy." The word was a warning and a plea escaping between bared teeth. "I want this done."

Hermione had either ignored or not overheard the short exchange. With one hand resting on the door knob, she turned to the men behind her and took a deep breath. A shaky smile tried to light up her face, but turned into a sort of grimace.

"Welcome back to the Veil Room," she said, nervously clearing her throat.

Pressure on Teddy's ears made him swallow several times. Without light from above and the door shut behind them, the room was as dark as an underground cave. Absolute. Unyielding.

"What are we looking for?" Teddy asked. He adjusted the weight of the guitar on his back, feeling more grounded with the instrument with him.

"Residue," Hermione said. "The threads binding Sirius and I together. I'll give you an incantation to help me."

Hermione took out her wand and lit several sconces on the walls around the room. Light refracted through crystals, installed after the attack in 1996, intended to monitor the status of the energy in the room. They had been a focal point of Ogden's ritual according to Hermione's previous explanations to Teddy when studying runes. She held out her hand with two dark stones covered in scratches and markings, runes he did and did not recognize. Teddy took one and Sirius took the other.

"Those are obsidian, protection stones. They should heat up and the runes should glow brighter the closer we get to the Veil. You're looking for them to turn bright blue. If they turn anything other than blue, and I do mean anything, let me know immediately."

Teddy nodded and held the stone in front of him in both hands, his fingers cradling it so he could see as much of the surface as possible. Sirius mimicked his actions. His hands stopped fidgeting once he had something to hold and focus on.

Like small divining rods, the stones seemed to have minds of their own. Sinking into the magic around him the way his parents taught him before Hogwarts, Teddy took a few deep breaths to get his bearings. The process was made difficult by the massive amounts of energy to sift through. He quieted the louder pressures of magic against him to focus on what he could feel from the stone. Taking care not to close his eyes like he typically did when meditating like this, Teddy moved forward with cautious, measured steps.

Sirius had made his way to a corner of the room that still put several yards of distance between himself and the Veil. Teddy could see the scowl of concentration on his face as he muttered the short latin spell beneath his breath that kept a stream of power flowing into the stone and back to him, the same thing that Teddy and Hermione were doing. Instead of moving where the stone lead him he seemed to be mapping every inch of the room, trying not to miss a thing.

They worked in silence, an indeterminate amount of time passing. Focused as they were on their tasks, time didn't seem to matter much, so when Hermione called for a brief break Teddy blinked in surprise.

"An hour and nothing yet," she said as he walked over. "We need to let ourselves, and the stones, rest for a few minutes."

An enormous amphitheater, the room was more seating and steps than smooth floor, and everyone felt the ache in their legs from marching up and down. Sirius slumped onto a bench a few rows above Teddy, and Hermione procured water bottles out of the extended bag on her hip. Without something to do with his hands, Teddy instinctively swung his guitar to his front and strummed a few chords. The trickle of notes washed over them as they rested.

Teddy closed his eyes, letting his fingers make the decision of what to play next, landing on one of the first melodies his mother taught him how to play. A children's song, the notes laced between themselves, meant to be sung or played in a round, the acoustics of the room providing the closest thing to it.

"Teddy," Hermione whispered.

"Hmm?" He didn't open his eyes, just kept playing.

"Don't stop playing."

"What?" Teddy asked. He almost stopped playing but caught himself before the stuttering notes were too tangled. When he opened his eyes, he saw why Hermione had whispered.

Motes of dust twisted in the air between brilliant lines of light, bouncing from crystal to crystal, all starting from a halo around the three of them. Each time he strummed the color and intensity of the magic responded. Spellbound, he stared at the ways it responded and played around a little to see what kind of reactions he could coax.

At first glance he thought the magic started from the encompassing halo surrounding their group, but following the flow he could see where it began with the crystals, brimming with energy and spilling out of each facet. Like sunlight through lead glass crystals in a chandelier, every color of the spectrum played around them and on the walls, changing the dark stone room into a spectacular sight.

"What's going on?" Teddy whispered to Hermione, not taking his eyes away from the light show around them.

"The magic is filling the room. But...look, it's avoiding certain areas. Do you see that?"

"Yes," Sirius said, chiming in for the first time. His voice sounded choked and emotional to Teddy, but he couldn't keep his eyes away from the magic long enough to look at him.

"Those are the spots we need to investigate. Can you stand and keep playing, Teddy?"

Teddy nodded, slipping to the next step down for leverage. Strumming the same few chords over and over again he stuck to the notes that made the magic around them the brightest and easiest to track. Reaching the first pocket of darkness, a heaviness settled on his shoulders he hadn't noticed before, though he was sure he'd walked past this spot on the way in. There were four other pockets devoid of light around the room, forming the five points of a pentagram across the space with the Veil in the middle. While not inherently evil, it wasn't surprising to see the shape used after so much Dark Magic was cast in the room by Bob Ogden.

"How is music making this happen?" Teddy asked.

"The crystals work on resonance, so it must have some kind of frequency that is responding to the guitar," Hermione said. "Though I had no idea that was a possibility. Scientifically magic works on waves like light and sound do which is why not everyone can use it. You have to be in-tune to it, a literal sixth sense muggles, squibs, and other non-magical people don't have."

Sirius cleared his throat behind them. "Very interesting. What do we do now that we know that?"

"One of these might hold the dark magic holding our souls together," she said, voice wavering only slightly. "There's an enchantment. I have to do it alone since I was technically the original caster, but I need the two of you to keep watch for what happens while I cast it. Can I trust you both to let me see this through to the end, no matter what happens? Teddy you have to keep playing. Sirius, don't let me stop casting."

Neither man spoke, Teddy's fingers plucking the strings of his guitar with determination and Sirius staring at Hermione as if he wanted to challenge her. She set her jaw and stared right back at the older wizard.

"Sirius. Promise me."

"Fine!" he spat. "I don't like this. You sound like you could get hurt doing this and that is exactly the opposite of the point."

"No, the point is to break whatever dark magic is binding us together so we can go back to being individual people free of some stupid fucking bond that could be playing tricks on our minds and emotions." She paused and sighed, putting a hand on his arm. The fight filtered out of her and her tone was gentle. "I want you to be free for the first time in your life. Trust me, I can do this."

Sirius leaned forward to put his forehead against hers. "I know. I just don't like it. Imagine what Harry would do to me if I let his best friend get hurt."

Hermione snorted a surprised laugh and stepped back away from Sirius towards the pocket of darkness. "Harry knows better than that, Sirius."

Without further preamble, Hermione lifted her wand and started to chant.


End file.
